


Heroes

by neversaydie



Series: Like Real People [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Remembers, Captain America: The First Avenger, Genderqueer Bucky Barnes, Heroism, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Memories, Non-Binary Bucky, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-13 08:22:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5701561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neversaydie/pseuds/neversaydie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"D'you get scared too?" Bucky asks it so quietly that Steve could pretend to miss it if he wanted to, but he's not going to not be brave when he's just tried to explain what brave is. God help him. At least his Ma is probably very proud somewhere. </p><p>"I get really scared. I get scared before every time I fight. I got so scared I'd lose you that I didn't want to breathe anymore." He doesn't elaborate or let Bucky dwell on it, just delivers the facts with as little waver in his voice as he can manage and a light squeeze to Bucky's fingers. </p><p>"So you're brave too." It sounds so matter of fact coming from Bucky's lips, and Steve doesn't understand why his eyes are suddenly full of tears. "You're still here."</p><p>"I didn't mean to be." Steve blinks furiously and tries not to sound choked up. This isn't what he meant to happen, this is supposed to be about Bucky's memory and not him bleeding out all over someone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heroes

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Heroes by David Bowie. Because today.

The apartment is oddly quiet when Steve comes through the front door. It's been a long briefing session with the team and he figures Bucky might have gone out, it's not like he's locked in here, but he's still yet to leave the Tower on his own. A quick (quiet) question as he toes his shoes off and JARVIS confirms that Bucky's still in the building, that he hasn't left his bedroom for the past few hours. That's not great sign these days, not when things are starting to get a little bit better. Whatever better means now.

Bracing himself for the worst, although he can't see anything broken or hear any of the muffled noises of distress that mean Bucky has lost track of where he is, Steve grabs a bottle of water from the fridge and crosses the apartment. He intentionally makes enough noise to announce his presence to Bucky, which apparently means that the cat becomes aware of his approach too. Jager wriggles through the small space where Bucky's door has been left ajar, butting his head against Steve's leg and purring loudly when he reaches down to scritch behind the cat's ears.

The cat looks like he just woke up, puffy sleep face and all as he pushes his nose into Steve's fingers before trotting off to find someone to feed him. That must mean Bucky is at least fairly calm, maybe he's just been napping and there's no cause for alarm at all. Steve has never been much of an optimist, but Bucky did always bring out the best in him.

A quiet knock doesn't get an answer, but Steve pushes the door open far enough to poke his head in anyway. Bucky is sitting on the bed cross-legged, hair scooped up in a messy bun and favourite safe sweater sleeves pulled down so he can ball his fingers in the soft pink fabric. He's staring at (through) something on his laptop, eyes blank until he registers Steve's movement and seems to come back to life, tugging off his headphones and looking up like it might have been minutes or hours since he lost focus.

"Am I awake?" The words are rough, like his mouth is dry and his tongue barely fits in it. Steve takes that as an invitation and walks into the room, uncapping the water and handing it to Bucky before sitting on the edge of the bed.

"Yeah, you're awake. It's nearly eight in the evening." He watches Bucky take greedy gulps of water once he realises how thirsty he is, only touching his elbow gently to get him to stop when he's worried he'll make himself sick drinking so fast. "You okay?"

"I think so." The quiet noise from his headphones, which they can both hear as clearly as if a stereo was playing, is clearly bothering him. Bucky hits the space bar on his keyboard to pause it, and Steve just gets a glimpse of youtube before Bucky's shoving the laptop out of the way with renewed vigour. "I remembered something."

He looks half-proud of himself, like he wants to make Steve happy by remembering something even though it might not be something he wants to hear. Steve steels himself and goes through his mental checklist: don't make him feel shitty for remembering something shitty, don't stop him from telling you something horrific if he needs to say it, only correct him if you can verify something happened with your own eyes. There are other guidelines, but those are the ones Dr Khan made stick in his mind for when memories come back and he's not expecting it.

Sometimes Bucky remembers Sarah Rogers or school or his sisters or the disastrous double dates he dragged Steve on to keep up appearances. Those memories make each of the terrible ones worth it, so Steve hopes and smiles.  

"That's great, Buck. You wanna tell me about it?" He settles himself a little more comfortably, because it's been a long day and sometimes Bucky's memories can take a while to get out when they're not entirely clear. Steve will wait forever in a sweaty shirt, he doesn't care, but he'll adjust his lower back if he gets the chance.

"I remember. It… It was Germany." Bucky hesitates for a long time, prying his thoughts apart, and Steve wishes he could give Bucky something to narrow things down. 'Germany', however, isn't exactly a small source of memories for them. "We were captured."

"That was Austria, remember before I—"

"No, not then. After. You and me. They caught us." Bucky rubs his thumbs hard into his temples, trying to put the indistinct, hazy memory into words that Steve can understand. He's recently painted his nails black with turquoise sparkles that catch the light, and the sight is oddly grounding to Steve somehow because it separates _then_ from _now_ so definitely. "We were in the woods, away from camp. It was dark… we were trying to be quiet—"

"Oh. _Oh_." Steve's cheeks flush red in spite of himself. He's crazily happy when Bucky remembers _anything_ , but embarrassing sex-related memories are new territory. "Yeah, that happened. Go on."

"They… They caught us in the woods. HYDRA. And they threw us in the back of that truck. And your pants were down. An-And they grabbed you…" He trails off and swallows heavily, looking at nothing in the general direction of Steve's knees.

Steve remembers this like it was yesterday, now it's been brought out into the open. Sneaking off while Dum Dum was on watch on the other side of camp because it'd been _weeks_ since the last time they had the opportunity to do more than peck each other on the lips at the back of the group and try to shrug off the wolf-whistles. Getting caught mid-furtive fuck by HYDRA goons, so far from camp that they'd do nothing but get their friends killed if they made a sound. The bastards had been stealthy enough to snap some kind of heavy cuffs around Steve's elbows, stretch them behind his back so he couldn't get the leverage to free himself right away. He doesn't know how they restrained Bucky, he was too busy blinking blood out of his eyes.

He remembers the dirt-wood-damp smell of the truck floor, his cheek picking up splinters as he was dropped on it unceremoniously. He remembers understanding enough to get that they were being called faggots and hearing Bucky's growling through his ringing ears. He only realised his pants were still down when someone slapped his ass with something that didn't feel like skin and there was an assortment of cheers and babble he was too dizzy to decipher at the _smack_. He remembers scrabbling to get his feet under him when a lighter and then harder touch slipped over his bare skin and down –

Then the _CRASH_. The sudden alarm of the enemy soldiers around him. The meat noise of violence in a small space and the lurch as the truck stopped moving. The _PWAP_ of gunshots from substandard weapons and the heavy lurch of bodies being thrown. Then Steve had his feet under him and he was pushing himself upright just when Bucky was grabbing him by the shoulders and hauling him out of the truck, away from the stench of blood and the dead pandemonium.

_"You're okay Stevie, look at me." He was caked in blood. Steve had been through a lot of battles but he'd never seen that much blood on one man before. Bucky was pulling his pants up and fastening them with deft fingers before he yanked the restraints on his arms down far enough that Steve had the leverage to break them like they were normal handcuffs and free himself. "You're okay, they can't hurt you now."_

"They hurt you. And they said we… but all the shame was on _their_ side. We didn't have nothing to be ashamed of. Not me and you." Bucky's knuckles are white against the knees of the fish scale leggings he's wearing and when he looks Steve in the eye he looks exactly like he had in '45, covered in HYDRA blood and grabbing Steve's shoulders like nothing else in the world could ever matter. "The shame was on _them_. Not us. _Not you_."

"Not us." Steve puts his hands over Bucky's, soothing him with gentle touch just the way he had back then, under the moonlight that made the blood on Bucky's skin look black and his eyes so wild Steve thought they might never be touched with a smile again. He hadn't expected this to come up today but he can handle it, he can roll with the punches like always because Bucky needs him to even if he doesn't understand everything. "We weren't ashamed. I'm not ashamed, Buck."

He'd been grossed-out and disgusted by the leather-gloved hands roughly groping his bare ass, but he'd never understood why _that_ had sent Bucky into berserker mode when blows to the head hadn't. Some chivalrous notion of protecting Steve's virtue, what little was left of it, is all he'd chalked it up to at the time (and he'd never questioned why Bucky could take out an entire squadron of HYDRA soldiers on his own, if only because he'd known he could do the same thing if they'd threated Bucky like that). They'd never had time to pause afterwards, never had enough time alone for Steve to feel like he could bring up the way Bucky's hands shook unless he was holding a rifle and how he barely slept anymore and wouldn't even unzip his pants to piss within ten feet of the other Commandos.

He never thought back to Zola's table and the way Bucky had needed to button his pants when he stood up until long after he'd been defrosted. Until Bucky was locked in a Stark Industries secure ward and terrified of being touched. Now Steve's pretty sure he understands more than enough exactly why Bucky lost his shit at the prospect of Steve being defiled by HYDRA.  

"I-It was the Soldier. I wasn't right, even back then. There was something wrong with me." Bucky sounds like he's grating every word through his tonsils just to get them out, but they're coming out and spilling all over them like blood regardless. Steve squeezes his hands gently and Bucky shakes his head. It's been a while since he lost his shit with Dr Khan, but this is the same way he'd acted in the aftermath and Steve has to wonder if they're linked. "I had to save you, I had to stop them… But I couldn't… I… It was the Soldier. I wasn't strong enough on my own and I couldn't…"

"We beat them, Bucky. You beat them." Steve slowly, but never cautiously, leans forward until their foreheads are touching. Until he feels Bucky's clammy skin against his and unsteady breath huffing against his lips. It's terrible and perfect and everything he's ever needed. "You saved me and you're still fighting, and I'm so fuckin' proud of you. You've got nothing to be ashamed of, you're my hero."

They'd kissed there, in the pale light beside the open canvas of the van they'd been shoved into, boots tacky with blood as gunfire sounded in the far distance. Steve remembers a muffled groan somewhere on his left, behind him, remembers Bucky shooting it quiet without breaking the kiss or opening his eyes to aim. Because nothing was going to pull him away from Steve right then, not even death.

The Winter Soldier wasn't born then, Steve knows that deep in his gut. He might never be able to convince Bucky, but he _knows_.

"But I was so scared, I was _so scared_ they were gonna hurt you and I couldn't protect you. I was so weak." Bucky's babbling a little, but it's more than he usually manages to get out about his feelings and memories so Steve doesn't try and stop him as long as he's not starting to panic. "I-I was too scared, and then the Soldier took over because I couldn't do it. He must've done, I was too… too…"

"D'you know why you're my hero, Bucky?" He stops the stuttering carefully, watches Bucky's wide, damp eyes for anything that looks like checking out or panicking before he continues. Bucky just looks lost, at sea in his churning thoughts, and Steve needs to give him something solid to hang onto. Bucky's been his hero for a long time, long before psych wards and HYDRA rescues, but he's never tried to explain it until now. "Being a hero means you've gotta be brave, right? Like how Sam's a hero because every time we go into a fight he could get killed. He can't just walk off jumping out of a window or getting shot like I can, but he's still fighting. Being a hero is being scared to death of something and doing it anyway, because you care enough about something to go through that fear."

"But I… I-I'm not brave." Bucky sounds so small, so raw after the memory that's torn through him full-force today, and Steve presses a kiss to his forehead because he can't just scoop him into his arms like he wants to. They're broken and stitched back together and if anyone is brave then it's Bucky, and Steve can't let him not hear that after finding out what he's thinking about himself.

If Bucky thinks that the Winter Soldier is the only brave part of him then he's got another thing coming, along with all Steve's born-in pig-headedness to try and prove him wrong.

"You get out of bed, Buck. I know how scared you are of living some days, but you do it and you're so brave." Steve ducks his head and makes Bucky look him in the eye, because he needs him to hear this. If he's remembering that night then there could be a whole lot of shit around the corner, and Bucky needs to know Steve gets just how much he's fighting. "I know you're scared of going to sleep, I know you're scared of a lot of things. And you _still_ do them, and you're _still_ fighting."

"Because I care about you." Bucky murmurs, sounding sure about something for the first time in a while, and Steve thinks his heart might up and burst. "I care about you enough to go through it."

"Exactly. We care about each other enough to go through anything we're scared of, whatever happens." Steve presses another kiss to Bucky's forehead, just lingering for a second in case it's too much, too fast. "You were brave that night, not the Soldier. I remember."

"D'you get scared too?" Bucky asks it so quietly that Steve could pretend to miss it if he wanted to, but he's not going to not be brave when he's just tried to explain what brave is. God help him. At least his Ma is probably very proud somewhere.

"I get really scared. I get scared before every time I fight. I got so scared I'd lose you that I didn't want to breathe anymore." He doesn't elaborate or let Bucky dwell on it, just delivers the facts with as little waver in his voice as he can manage and a light squeeze to Bucky's fingers.

"So you're brave too." It sounds so matter of fact coming from Bucky's lips, and Steve doesn't understand why his eyes are suddenly full of tears. "You're still here."

"I didn't mean to be." Steve blinks furiously and tries not to sound choked up. This isn't what he meant to happen, this is supposed to be about Bucky's memory and not him bleeding out all over someone else. But Bucky just touches their foreheads together and makes that soft _shh_ sound like he did back in the middle of nowhere, soaked in blood and shaking with adrenaline and not giving a shit about anything but Steve.

"But you are." He sounds sure, so sure of something, and that's enough to make the bubble in Steve's chest want to well over. "It's okay, we can be scared. We can be heroes together."

And it doesn't matter for shit if Bucky doesn't really understand what a hero is. It doesn't matter if a thousand books call Steve a _Hero of the Nation_ and talk about his grand sacrifice like he's a marble statue. It doesn't matter if people call Steve their hero for some abstract concept of what he supposedly did without knowing or caring why. All that matters is that Steve and Bucky are scared and they're still fighting and they're still together. They can take _hero_ and wear it like a badge of honour, not a curse.

This time, Steve is the one who hides his face in Bucky's shoulder and tries to pretend he's not crying. Bucky holds him through it, just like always. There's no shame between them, never ever.

They can be heroes, as long as they're together.


End file.
